Punktown: Shades of Grey (8 page)

She leaned across the table (nearly upending her single-person scorpion bowl) and yelled loudly over the karaoke music (a wretched country song sung by a drunken Tikkihotto, his ocular tendrils tangling), “Dolt, your rhymes are lacking, you should close up shop and get to packing.” That was a mocking lyric by Mister Maestro E, from a song in which he challenged the song-writing skills of singer P. Laureate. Aundrea then went on to correct rex’s gassed-up mangling of O’Nasty’s words: “What makes you think you’re such a cutie; you ain’t nothing but another crawling cootie.”

rex
waved away her words, squirted some more gas while the others laughed too.

Their waitress returned and asked if they needed another round. Josh pointed to his nearly empty bottle of Zub. He did not verbally ask for one. Sissy, likewise, mutely tapped her finger on the rim of her beer bottle. Karlos shook his head. He was still nursing his soda. He was the only one of them who didn’t drink alcohol or do any drugs; it was a point of intense pride with him. It bothered him now that Aundrea was sucking away at that huge scorpion bowl (he would hate to see the two-person version) after already downing a Zub before that. He was biting his tongue tonight, though; they’d fought about her drinking many times before, and she wouldn’t stop these Friday night
Blue Panda
excursions no matter how passionately he opposed her. It was hard for him to argue his side of the issue, when more song lyrics celebrated partying than criticized it.

Josh hunkered over his fresh Zub, watching Aundrea as she perused the table monitor’s list of karaoke offerings, punching into the DJ’s queue the numbers of a song she wanted to perform, while Karlos voiced his disapproval of her overtly sexual selection by quoting Shale Sleet: “Girl, the words outta your mouth make you sound like a slut; I’d rather listen to a prosty gurgling with her throat cut.”

Karlos was too domineering, Josh thought, too negative, too critical. He was more like Aundrea’s father than a boyfriend, in his opinion. And he knew she was chafing under Karlos’s constant browbeating. He knew because Aundrea had been confiding in him about it. When not chatting at break, or in stolen vidphone conversations, they passed each other little notes at work.

Sissy was now sitting on Keith’s lap, alternately whispering in and licking his ear, since her boyfriend and his wife were not present. Josh didn’t know if they were screwing or not, but if they were it wasn’t fair; why should anyone have two lovers when he didn’t even have one? The last partner he’d had was Melanie (recently split from her boyfriend, she lived in the same condo complex he and his parents did), but she had broken it off, citing their age difference (she being ten years older than his nineteen). Lately he’d been writing flirty notes to Rain, another PetZone coworker, only five years older and in an unhappy marriage…that had looked like it might go somewhere. But since he and Aundrea had been growing closer, he had dropped his efforts with Rain. Aundrea was only three years older. And she was discontented with her current relationship. And in her last note to him, she had confessed that she found Josh “adorable” and that she fantasized about what it would be like to make love with him.

He sat toward the end of the two long tables, with all their friends between Aundrea and himself. Sat watching her, like a carrion bird, watching for that convulsing relationship to kick its last and die. He heard Karlos cry, “Close your hole, you sow, and stop your whine! I’ve put up with your dung for the very last time!” It was from a turgid, hyper-dramatic and hyper-misogynistic song from Enigman.

“You can’t mold me with your cruel commands,” Aundrea retorted, trampling Karlos’s attempt to throw another quote at her. Hers was from a pulsing dance track by club-queen Chandra Shankar. “I’m not the clay in your heartless hands…”

The DJ called Sissy up to do her song, and she nearly fell to the floor slipping off of Keith’s lap. Squealing with delight, she took her place on the micro-stage and began singing along energetically to a locomotive erotic song by the very same Chandra Shankar, who belly-danced in her vid for it. Sissy always liked to put on a show, and did her best to imitate the singer’s gyrations, looking both ridiculous and sexy. Tonight she was wearing a pair of fake miniature angel wings and a shirt that showed off her midriff, just like Chandra Shankar, except that in her vid Chandra wore white angel wings and Sissy’s were red and sequined so that they looked like crimson feathers coated in rubies. Or, Josh thought, they looked soaked in blood and the sequins glittered like wet droplets, as if the little faux wings had been hacked off a cherub so she could wear them on her back. Her wings flapped quickly (though their speed could be alternated from vulture-slow to hummingbird-rapid), seemingly to the beat of the song.

Josh looked back to Aundrea, who wore dark purple wings, sparkling with dark purple sequins and glitter. Hers did not have that mechanized feature like Sissy’s had. The fad had begun with the popular vid for the song
On Purple Wings
from the band 5Guyz, in which the beautiful model featured in the vid wore a pair of wings much like those Aundrea had on. Though of course, the fad had really caught on when Chandra Shankar wore her white wings—and little else—in her vid for
Naughty Angel
, which Sissy wailed to emotionally
now.

Aundrea was short, curvy and
pale,
her long hair dyed the same dark purple of her wings. Her white face glowed in its curtains of hair, shone above her black T-shirt, floated against the smoky air of the restaurant’s bar. And in that white face, the eyes turned darkly and fleetingly in Josh’s direction. She hadn’t said a word to him all night. But he saw the subtlest of smiles—as if only a few cells shifted to accomplish it—flicker on her face. His heart stumbled, more drunk than his brain. He wanted more than anything to be inside her pale body. He tipped his beer back and gulped at the cold invading sensation. He must wait. He must write her another note. He would tell her he fantasized about making love to her, too.

Karlos pointed at Aundrea’s scorpion bowl as she madly applauded and whooped upon Sissy’s completion of her song. He yelled over the noise, “Must I watch you self-destruct? Must you burn like Icarus? I can’t be there to save your soul!”
This, from a sobbing ballad by Pepe Cruz.

Aundrea whirled to face him. “You don’t understand—I’m the rib of no man!” Jeanny Jonestown.

“This isn’t about me owning you,” Karlos fairly bellowed, “I’m not trying to put you in chains! But all I ask is that we join hands and put an end to both our pain!” 4Boyz.

As usual, accustomed to these scenes, none of the others took sides or intervened. It would play out, and they’d make up sooner or later. And then it would all start up again next Friday.
Aundrea drinking too much, Karlos yelling too much.
And
Josh silently sitting there at the end, chatting with Keith a little, once in a while performing a karaoke song himself
. And waiting in the wings.
Waiting in the purple wings
, he thought soddenly. Tonight, he expected nothing more than that. But he couldn’t wait for the next
work week
to begin. He’d write his note over the weekend. He might even write a poem for her, as he used to do for neighbor Melanie. It was easier for him to think and articulate himself if what he wrote was in rhyme.

««—»»

At PetZone, Aundrea wore her purple glittery wings along with her white PetZone uniform. She and Sissy were groomers. Today Sissy was doing her best to groom a small, nervous and many-legged Tikkihotto animal she had never even heard of before; rex had tried to help by printing out some information on it from the computer system. It was slow this morning so Aundrea was currently feeding the fish. It was dark in this corner of the vast, high-ceilinged store and the aquariums glowed intimately, burbled soothingly. Aundrea felt her own guts burble as she saw Josh coming toward her, grinning.

He said, “I was walking down the street when I saw this hot, hot whore; knew I had to drill her ’til she couldn’t take no more!” He liked to tease her with such over-the-top flirtation. It was easier than being sincerely romantic.

But he passed her the note he’d written. It was the fifth version of it; he’d worked on it all weekend. Still grinning, he turned and started away.

“Hey sexy bitch,” Aundrea called after him, quoting Maurice M. D., “don’t walk away so fast!” She liked to tease him in turn by quoting raunchy songs sung by men. But he didn’t stop, disappeared behind shelves heavy with dog food stacked like sand bags. She looked down at the note she unfolded in her hands and read it by the soft aquarium glow.

Josh was hanging up some new dog leashes and collars (the dark purple ones reminded him of Aundrea’s hair) when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and there she was; it felt like his heart was on a choke chain and had been given a harsh tug. Aundrea was smiling very subtly and took his hand, drawing him around behind the display. Then, when they were partially shielded from view, she put her arms around his neck and drew him down to her kiss.

His note to her had concluded with a
poem which
had read in part:

“I won’t rest till
your
in my arms,

I want to hold you 4ever without a care,

Aundrea is the person that I live for,

I want to lie down with her bare,

I would kiss you till the end of time,

Theirs no way to say my love in this rhyme.”

And he had finished off his own poem with the lines from 5Guyz, “On purple wings you take me high; soaring free across the sky.”

««—»»

Twenty-two years old and working in BurgerZone
, thought Karlos, standing at the window in his little drive-through cell. He motioned impatiently for the helicar outside to drop down lower so he could hand over its order. He found it difficult to speak exclusively in quoted song lyrics in his line of work, but he tried to keep the bland, dead, emotionless exchange of unlyrical words to a bare minimum. After all, Karlos himself was a writer, and words were his domain. He was currently working on his first novel, which would follow the adventures of a syndy hitman—Jimmy Dante—with a tortured conscience. The novel,
Dante’s Hell
, would be entirely in rhyme. He intended to do a screenplay of it as well but wasn’t decided as yet whether to make all the dialogue rhyme for that version. Would it be a tougher or easier sell if the movie version followed the trend of lyrical expression?

While he worked, Karlos listened to the blasting anger of the group Mystery Worm. He sang to the music aloud, but his voice was a low mutter. “Death cloud, death cloud…Cthulhu shall rain his pain upon you…”

Inside his closely shorn head, a chip implant (a Christmas present from his parents) could receive either “stream”—free public transmissions paid for with advertising—or music from his own collection, programmed into his home entertainment system and remote-broadcasted to him. Some chip-wearers used a control bracelet but Karlos’s parents had let him get his controls tattooed onto his left forearm. The music went directly to Karlos’s brain as a translated signal, bypassing the actual process of “hearing.”

“Death cloud,” he chanted the chorus again in the German accent of the lead singer, “death cloud…Cthulhu shall rain his pain upon youuu…”

He knew that Aundrea liked Josh.

It wasn’t his habit to peek in Aundrea’s pocketbook, but he had suspected her of smoking drugs with Sissy, whom he knew to be an avid drug smoker. He had on occasion inspected the contents of her bag over the past two years of their relationship, but had never found anything especially upsetting until this morning while she was in the shower of the small apartment they shared.

He had never suspected that Josh might be attracted to Aundrea, have feelings for his girlfriend, whom he expected to marry one day, until he read:

“I won’t rest till
your
in my arms,

I want to hold you 4ever without a care,

Aundrea is the person that I live for,

I want to lie down with her bare,

I would kiss you till the end of time,